


Back to the Future

by Frangipanidownunder



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-28 03:38:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10822962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frangipanidownunder/pseuds/Frangipanidownunder
Summary: One bed revival fic.





	Back to the Future

Her calves were sore, her hamstrings twinging and the dull ache in her left shoulder reminded her that she hadn’t been to the physio in weeks. She hadn’t run that much in heels since god knows when. Why the fuck did she still wear heels, anyway? It’s not as if Mulder or Skinner or any of the other god damned men she worked with hadn’t cottoned on to the fact that she was actually, truly and really, short. Scully was pretty sure that she’d more than proven her strengths over the decades to be forgiven a few inches. After all, men got away with that reasoning all the time.

She sighed as she rubbed the back of her neck. Mulder’s middle-aged crisis thing was wearing. It was all very well for him to look over his shoulder at the golden years of their mutant and monster quests, but it wasn’t his neck that had been lassoed by their mere mortal murderer. And anyway, he’d seen his monster now. Let the future begin. And let it begin with a long, hot bath.

He thrummed the steering wheel with irritating precision. The Presidents of the United States of America were musing about lingering last in line for brains and she mused that she’d trade brains for a healthy dose of patience today. The car slowed and Mulder indicated to pull over.

“What’s going on?” she said, twisting her whole upper body to see behind her.

“Relax, Scully. There are no men in black and no unlicensed sedans following us. Helicopters are not going to materialise from the hills.”

“What hills, Mulder? This place is flat as fuck.”

He quirked his mouth into a lazy smile. “Have you been spending too much time on the net, Scully?”

“No, I’ve been spending too much time stopping on random highways waiting for you to enlighten me the fuck up. I could have written a trilogy of trilogies in the hours I’ve spent in the car with you, Mulder.”

The window lowered. “See that fence?”

“I see a lot of fence, Mulder. Miles and miles of road and miles and miles of fence.”

“That’s keeping us out.”

She sucked in a sharp breath. Should she just get out and walk away now? “From what?”

He grinned, that open-mouthed, dimple-inducing grin that made the skin on the back of her knees quiver. Fuck, she was a sucker for that smile. “There’s a No Trespassing sign, Mulder, but I’m guessing that’s a moot point. And now you’re going to tell me that we’re breaking through the fence to shine a Maglight on dark government conspiracies, autopsied alien bodies, space goop, time portals or the name of the next James Bond.”

“I detect a hint of sarcasm, Scully.”

“And I detect a hint of Mulder disregarding state and federal laws, the fact that we’ve just closed a case and actually caught a real-life human killer, my severe neck pain and both of our advancing years.”

She turned back towards the sun setting directly in front of them, an orange glowing ball as maddeningly miraculous yet as constant as Mulder had been over the years. As surely as humans needed Vitamin D, Scully needed Mulder and he needed her and one day one of them would implode, explode or simply peter out and the other would expire in the dark wake left behind. Today was not that day. He was throwing out flames and part of her loved it.

Just not all the aching parts.

“But Scully, did you know that behind that fence there is the remains of a town that was evacuated purportedly to save the inhabitants from the choking and poisonous fumes of an underground coal fire that could never be extinguished.”

“Centralia, Mulder?”

“Well, this is not Centralia, and that was a genuine underground fire. No, this is Sycamore Plains. And you’ll note there are no sycamores, in fact there isn’t much vegetation here at all and yet a few miles in either direction is an oasis of lushness. If you checked the meteorological maps here, you’d see it’s the driest part of the state. No rain has fallen in two years. But you can’t check that because there are no meteorological maps for this area.”

“And my investigative training tells me to ask you, Agent Mulder, how you would know that no rain has fallen…”

“…if there are no maps, I knew you’d say that Scully. But even with my years in the wilderness of incarceration, ex-communication, isolation, depression and watching you leave me…”

She looked back at the sinking sun.  
“I have retained some of my mysterious contacts.”

He tapped the side of his nose.

She shook away the incessant buzzing in her ears, probably caused by a blood vessel threatening to burst and laughed. “I am not setting foot out of this car, Mulder. Mystery contacts or no, this day will end with a night in a decent bed in a motel without a jackalope on the wall and pervert for a desk clerk.”

The tear in her pants left her right butt cheek exposed and chilled. Blisters oozed open on the back of her feet. The sudden barometric drop left her gasping against the head wind as her hair lashed at her face. Mulder strode ahead and she scurried behind. A real blast from the fucking past.

By now, the darkness had seeped down to the earth and her heels were sticking in the damp mud. Ahead, Mulder stopped, hand on hip, flashlight beaming forward, lighting up a structure, that might have been a clapboard bungalow. The sign on the mail box squealed on its hinges on the strengthening breeze.

“This is it, Scully. This is the township.”

She folded her arms around her abdomen. This really is it.

“It’s going to rain, Mulder. So much for your driest spot in the state theory.”

He looked up and blinked. “I think you might be…”

In the time it took for Mulder to say ‘right’ she’d barrelled into the side of him, lifted her jacket over her head and welcomed his arm around her back as they ran towards the house.

The door was off its hinges and fell clear away as they ran through to the hallway. Mulder pulled her into the first room, a living room, where stringy net curtains blew in and out, sending musty draughts over them.

“This is just great,” she said, flipping water off her arms and scraping the hair off her face.

“It’s unbelievable is what it is Scully.”

He was actually excited. Just like that graveyard in Bellefleur. She fingered the ripped fabric on the back of her pants, wondering what it would feel like to shred his suit jacket with her bare hands and teeth.

“Mulder, we’re stuck in a house that is quite possibly filled with noxious fumes or toxic dust or a dozen other things that could cause us harm and you’re smiling like you’ve seen your were-lizard again. This was not part of the deal.”

The beam from his flashlight swung away and his footsteps followed it. She stayed, taking small comfort in the quietening of the storm outside. Perhaps they could go on with their journey, after all. Their lives.

“Come here, Scully. There’s a room with all the windows intact.”

As she walked towards his voice, a screech of wind shook the house and she held out a hand to steady herself. The wood surrounding the door crumbled under her touch and ripped the skin on her hand. She staggered down the hallway meeting Mulder headlong. He dragged her through the door and pushed it shut. The cacophony of rain on the roof was like a jet plane landing. She clapped her hands over her ears and smelt the coppery blood.

A bedroom. Of course it was. With one bed.

Mulder was already sitting on the end of it, shining his flashlight around the room, highlighting cobwebs hanging like zombied crocheted shawls in each corner, an electrical wire where the central light had hung and a number of dirty shadows where paintings or photos once brought the room to life. This had been somebody’s home. She sunk on to the bed next to Mulder and wondered whose life had been interrupted.

The wind died away as suddenly as it came.

“This is creepy,” she said.

He shone the light under his chin and made a silly face. He still managed to look handsome even with the grotesque shadows it created.

“What do you think the residents of Sycamore Plains would think if they came back here, Scully?”

“They’d be sad to see their homes like this, but you take your memories with you, wherever you live. The future is always ahead, no matter what’s behind you. A house is just a structure, but your home is where you fill it with your life. The residents are living somewhere else. Safe. They might not have planned for the upheaval, but they’ve probably survived it. And I’m sure if they did come back and this place was habitable again, they’d move on to. People are resilient, adaptable. But Mulder, what did you expect to see here?”

He rubbed his chin and smiled softly “A glimpse of our future?”

“What?”

“I wanted to see if we could sustain this life again, Scully. These cases we’ve investigated since we came back, the things we’ve learned, the things we don’t know about yet. Do we want to know? Are we ready?”

“So breaking into an abandoned village in the middle of an unexpected storm is a way of deciding if we’re ready for retirement? I’m not following.”

“I thought that being evicted from the only life I’d known meant that I couldn’t get back into the groove of it again. I was lost really, even when we first came back. There was a spark there but it was just a dull one. But Guy Mann restored my faith, Scully. And this village, this is a classic X-File. This is me trying to find out the mysteries of life, the conspiracies, to work out if the future is always linked to the past. This is classic Spooky Mulder hurtling headlong into the unknown with just his loyal partner to save his ass. You’re here.” He leant closer and rested his chin on her head.

“I’m here,” she said, nuzzling closer to him. “And I am furious, and aching, and freezing, and soaking and tired…”

“As fuck?”

“As all fuck, Mulder. Help me take off my shoes. My feet are killing me.”

Her body still remembered the shapes of his. Years apart had not dulled their muscle memory. Her pulse beat with his. His tender touch still left her tingling and gasping. The feel of him inside her as familiar and as welcome as home. She let him love her. Let him prove to her that hurtling headlong into the unknown was as sexy as all fuck. The rain beat down above them, the wind howled, lifting her cries to the rafters. She swore she lost nine minutes again.

And after, they lay curled together, quote marks, on a bed in a deserted village, pondering the future with a little more certainty.


End file.
